'Skins': Laya Lewis previews 'Liv'

It's all about Liv on tonight's episode of Skins, so who else to talk to than Laya Lewis herself? No-one! So we gave her a ring to chat about the episode.

Read on to find out who Liv shares a sweet moment with, why she was nervous about the instalment and why you should expect a "crazy violent" scene - then get back here tomorrow at 9am for some post-show chat.

Can you give us a quick overview of your episode?"Liv's episode is kind of about alienation, and people not dealing with the truth, and just being left out and loneliness. It's quite sad!"

It is! It seems to be about how Liv's dealing with Grace's death, too. How is she coping?"I don't really think she is. I think Alex came along and she just hung on to him. So I don't really think she is dealing with it at all. And I think in her episode, when Alex leaves, it's kind of like a slap in the face."

Does Alex going out of town make her face up to it a bit?"Yeah!"

How else does she feel when he leaves? Jealous? Annoyed?"Yeah, I think all of those things. She's jealous of [Alex's new boyfriend] Donovan, because [Alex and Liv] are not together in a sexual way, but he's kind of still hers. You can imagine this series, even though you haven't seen it, that they've spent all their time together. And suddenly he's just gone off and got a boyfriend and it's just like, 'What is she supposed to do now?' She's living in his house - she's all alone in this dead old lady's house. I think it's just weird, it's a weird situation."

She's kind of isolated from Franky and Mini as well..."Yeah, really isolated! I think they have this massive secret and Liv has no idea what it is. She knows they won't tell her and that starts from Mini's episode - she knows there's something and Mini won't tell her. It's that immature thing of, 'She was my friend first and now she's been stolen by Franky'. That kind of thing."

There's a little bit of violence too - what was it like filming that?"Yeah, yeah! It was really, really emotional. Like, unbelievably emotional. It was crazy. [The cast member I did it with] and I had to have a massive hug after that scene - we didn't know how violent it was going to be. We thought it was going to be like a catfight when we read it in the script, but then they got a choreographer in and it was crazy violent. It was quite scary to do."

It's an emotional episode overall - how did you deal with that?"I really don't know actually! I was in a bit of a frenzy for a few weeks, because that's how long it took to film. When it's your episode, you [normally] know you're going to end up having lots and lots of fun and there were elements of fun while filming, but mostly it was really, really hard to deal with stuff."

Were you worried or nervous about your episode, then?"I was really nervous. I got the script really, really late because they kept rewriting it and I finally got it and I just thought, 'Oh my God' - excuse my language - 'how the f**k am I going to do this?' You know, it always just comes. You literally tackle it scene by scene and eventually it all comes together."

One of the things that surprised me in the episode was a really sweet scene between Liv and Doug..."That was amazing! I really did have fun, actually, and I was quite honoured that I had the opportunity to have a one-on-one scene with Doug because he's like a Skins legend, isn't he? So that was really amazing."

So why should people be watching your episode?"I'd say to be shocked. There's a bit of violence, but you know in Franky's episode there was the raping and there's a lot of stuff that's quite shocking about the series. But this is shocking in the sense that it's so... I don't know, it's just so sad. There was a point when I first read the scripts when I thought a lot happens, but at the same time nothing really happens.

"It's one of those weird ones where it's so emotional - it's just all about her and how lonely she is. She never says it once, but it's nice to watch that. I don't know, for a lot of people it might feel like it's not stupid to think that your best friend's being stolen or to mess up. It's okay. So that's why!"